


Five Stayed Behind

by in_lighter_ink



Category: Doctor Who, Sherlock (BBC)
Genre: 1000-5000 Words, Comment Fic, Crossover, Five Times, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-03
Updated: 2011-07-03
Packaged: 2017-10-21 00:52:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/219109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/in_lighter_ink/pseuds/in_lighter_ink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Doctor Who/Sherlock (BBC), The Doctor (any) & author's choice, five people from the Sherlock-verse who chose not to go with the Doctor and one who did.</p><p>Now with 100% more editing!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Stayed Behind

**1**  
He can see, hidden in the child's mind, the shape of the man he'll become. It's a brilliant mind, all bright glittering crystalline pieces fitting together, refitting, moving changing _working_.

It hasn't entirely decided yet if it's going to be the kind of brilliance that illuminates or blinds. Maybe it'll be a bit of both.

The longer he looks, the longer he follows the trails of _mights_ and _won'ts_ and _coulds_ , the clearer it is, and the more he wants to sweep this child up into the TARDIS, try to mold him into…

Something else. Something better.

Because the Doctor can see it now: the little similarities, the cold little voids that should be warm, that mark this mind as akin to one he knows too well, another one he wishes he could save. The one he knows, deep down, that he never will.

The child is running, casting scared rabbit glances from side to side, searching for a place to hide from a group of older boys.

From the alleyway where he and the TARDIS are hiding from pursuers of their own, the Doctor beckons, holds the TARDIS door open for the boy.

He skids to a stop and his mouth falls open as he looks around, wide-eyed and taking every little detail in with too-intelligent eyes.

"Hello," he breaks the astonished silence. "I'm the Doctor. Who're you then? More importantly, care for an adventure? Have you home before teatime." He pauses, tilts his head to the side, looks lovingly at the console. "Possibly."

For a moment, just a moment, the boy wants, just as the Doctor wants to take him away and show him the beauty of the universe, to try to stop the future.

But the he shakes his head, goes back to the door and peeks out. When he turns back, his face is changed. Cunning, vengeful, cruel.

Not fearful anymore.

The Doctor's hearts sink.

"No. I have a plan now."

And then he grins, frightening and intense and gleeful. It's a familiar look.

"My name is James Moriarty. Mummy calls me Jamie, but I like Jim better."

And then he was gone.

 **2**  
She was reasonably sure that there's no such thing as the Ministry of Plants or whatever the young man with the sticky-out hair had stammered out, despite what the identification card he waved at her had read. The thought nagged at her all morning, and she kept an careful eye on him as he popped in and out of cubicles and corridors.

Then she noticed the trainers and _knew_ something was off.

Clara followed him at a discrete distance -- or, rather, what she thought had been a discrete distance -- until, abruptly, he turned around and grinned at her.

"Hallo! I'm the Doctor, and you've been following me. That's brilliant!" His expression changed, the grin instantly replaced by some mixture of curiosity and suspicion as he looked her up and down. "Why've you been following me?"

He didn't wait for an answer, just pulled something out of his pinstriped pocket, a little glowing thing that whirred, and pointed it at her.

"Nope! You're all right! Who are you then, if you're not host to a Horaxian?" His head tilted to one side. "Oooh, 'Horaxian host.' I like that," he added to himself.

The grin came back. The whole thing was vaguely unsettling and a lot overwhelming, but she answered anyway. She wasn't the sort to back away.

"Clara. Clara Talbot. And what the hell is a Horaxian?"

"Well then, Clara Talbot." He peered at something over her shoulder. "Run."

He grabbed her hand and she ran with him, too surprised to do anything else.

Three hours later, she found herself standing beside a old-fashioned police box. All parties were back in their correct bodies: intergalactic misunderstanding averted. So _those_ were Horaxians, then. On the whole, she rather wished she hadn't asked.

Simple, the Doctor had said. She was still giggling at the absurdity of it all when he turned to her, suddenly quite serious.

"So, Clara Talbot. All of time and space, little blue box?"

It's tempting, so tempting. Harry's drinking was getting worse than ever, and it would be so nice, so easy, to just run away from it and from her. From the lies and the manipulation and the fights. From the marriage.

But she shook her head. The Doctor had called her brilliant that day, and, for the first time in a long time, she'd remembered that he was right. "No. Thanks, but no. Too many things that need fixing here."

 **3**  
His face is horribly sad when she says no.

But she'd seen that Jeremy Hudson boy from down the road looking at her in a way that she's pretty sure this Doctor fellow never would, for all his bluster and promises.

"I'm sorry," she adds, genuinely feeling for the lonely man who'd given her a flower for her hair and loaned her his jacket when the sun had gone down.

But he'd only smiled at her. "Oh, don't worry about me. I'll be all right, I'm always all right. You go live your life, Penelope Ross. Live it well."

Nearly a lifetime later, she pours a second cup of tea and gently twirls an old pressed flower in her fingers. She doesn't regret it, exactly, turning the Doctor down, but she does wonder sometimes.

 **4 and 5**  
Their visitors had started to get on Sherlock's nerves, John could tell.

Not, as he well knew, that Sherlock had got endless reserves of patience and people skills, but John _had_ hoped that Sherlock would tolerate having Amy, Rory, and the Doctor around for just a little longer than he had.

John supposed he shouldn't have been so surprised. For one thing, there had been quite a lot of hugging over the past few days, and hugging never went entirely well with Sherlock.

It had been wonderful at first -- none of them seemed to see Sherlock as all that freakish, and any time the Doctor opened his mouth, John saw why. They'd bickered and traded brilliance for brilliance for hours, Sherlock and the Doctor, only pausing when one of the other three had pointed out the necessity of things like 'solving that series of impossible thefts.' And 'going back to the flat because it's dark out now and none of us have eaten all day.'

("Oh, brilliant!" the Doctor'd exclaimed when they'd returned to the cluttered disaster of a flat John and Sherlock happily called home. The Doctor had made a beeline for Sherlock's experiments, commenting and poking and grinning with such infectious joy and pride that John had _had_ to smile, too.

"Are those _ears_?" Amy hissed. "Human ears. In your fridge."

John had shrugged. "It's better than having the entire head in there. Again.")

And then it had all gone downhill.

It was patently obvious that the Doctor and Sherlock both were too used to being the most brilliant person in the room, and that Sherlock couldn't stand that he couldn't quite out-clever the Doctor. He'd taken to sulking about on rooftops by himself in a move that he called 'necessary for thinking' and John called 'melodramatic and childish.'

It was mostly better than the shouting, though.

Apparently Sherlock had never learned not to piss off a Scot, so John had spent much of his time exchanging sympathetic, long-suffering looks with Rory. The Doctor mostly ignored all of them, instead fiddling with things in the TARDIS and occasionally demanding they all shut up while he was being brilliant (which got Sherlock going again, of course).

Somehow, though, the thefts got solved, and, between the five of them, they'd convinced the culprits that, if they were so determined to make Earth their home, it would be easier and more fun to just buy the cling film and instant coffee that were apparently their only source of sustenance than to go stealing them and attracting police notice.

John would not be posting this particular case to his blog.

The question of John and Sherlock going traveling -- just for a little while -- with the Doctor, Amy, and Rory hadn't even needed to be asked. Which was a shame: John had grown quite fond of all three of them.

Still, they promised to drop in to Baker Street every once in a while.

 **\+ 1**  
Sherlock had been ignoring his texts all evening, which was unusual, but not entirely unprecedented. Git probably had spilled God-knew-what chemicals on his phone again -- Lestrade reminded himself to get John's mobile number this time.

Thus he found himself trudging up the narrow steps to their flat, case file in hand. It wasn't too urgent a case -- just bizarre -- but it was easier to drop by Baker Street on his way home from the office than to try and drag Sherlock in for his opinion in the morning.

"Oi, Sherlo--"

Lestrade stopped short, voice suddenly lost, stolen by a sight he'd never expected to see again.

The man sitting on the ratty sofa was younger-looking, but still impossibly old, older than anyone Lestrade had ever seen. Unmistakeable.

"Greg Lestrade!"

The cup of tea sitting precariously on a stack of books masquerading as an end table came dangerously close to spilling as the Doctor leapt up from his seat to catch Lestrade in a long hug.

When they parted, Lestrade looked him over, pausing to raise a curious eyebrow at the bow-tie.

The Doctor adjusted it proudly. "They're cool."

"The leather jacket was cool. That… I dunno."

"I've stopped arguing with him about it," the ginger girl perched on the arm of an old easy chair broke in. She seemed far too young, but Lestrade supposed he'd been back then, too.

"Ah, right!" The Doctor snapped his fingers, as if just remembering the others in the room. "Yes. Ponds --"

"Williamses," the boy in the chair interrupted, half-raising his hand as if he'd be better heard that way.

" _Ponds_ ," the Doctor continued, completely ignoring the feeble protest, "Greg Lestrade. Old friend. Greg, this is Amy and Rory."

Lestrade nodded at the couple, shared knowing smiles and a strange kind of kinship. Something told him not to ask after the bold blonde the Doctor'd been traveling with when Lestrade had known him.

Much later, after John and Sherlock had been treated to an evening of impossible stories (through which Sherlock had alternated between goggling at Lestrade and scoffing at the Doctor), Lestrade watched fondly as the TARDIS disappeared with a familiar sound, enjoying the feel of wind on his face. When he turned back, Sherlock was staring at him again. Perplexed wasn't a good look on him, and Lestrade had to suppress a giggle.

"What? You're the one who guessed I'd done a bit of traveling when I was young."


End file.
